The Third Eye - Your Tongue?

Saw this over the wire a few days ago, was talking about it yesterday and was reminded by a Spycraft forumers post today...scientists are developing a tongue interface to give people sonar and 360 degree vision. The principle of the thing is that your tongue has a huge amount of nerve endings, which may be used to bypass the optic nerve to get sensations to the brain. It's some wacky stuff - blind guys can catch balls thrown at them with this thing on. While I think the military applications are a little iffy for land based fighters (since you need your tongue to, y'know, talk), this could be revolutionary for deep sea and rescue divers, who could navigate via sonar in the murk and can't talk anyway. The brain and its amazing adaptability never ceases to stupify me.